


Lost Souls, Reverie

by J (jaywright)



Category: Sagas of Sundry: Madness (Web Series)
Genre: Additional Secondary Pairings Mentioned in Notes, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25928722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaywright/pseuds/J
Summary: "You're okay with portals to other worlds and creepy all-seeing entities, but not with ghosts?"
Relationships: Emmett Markham/Selina Tsukiyama, Selina Tsukiyama & Fenly Emerson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Lost Souls, Reverie

**Author's Note:**

> additional mentions of Abigail Persimmon/Jude Marley, implied Selina Tsukiyama/Abigail Persimmon, & potential implication of Selina Tsukiyama/Emmett Markham/Abigail Persimmon/Jude Marley/Fenly Emerson
> 
> content warning for POV character with canon-typical intrusive thoughts & hallucinations of voices

The first time it happened, she was alone in the hallway. 

(She was always alone.)

She was pacing, sleepless, crossing the floor in front of the black door over and over again, one of the discarded locks in her hands, turning the numbers, locking and unlocking it, trying to think. 

(Trying not to think.)

"Three." She knew the voice. (She knew all the voices.) "Eight. Six. Five." It narrated while she turned the numbers, the lock springing open again in her hands. She clicked the lock shut. "Three, eight, six five," it said again, this time before her fingers started to move, like an instruction.

"Three, eight, six, five," she agreed, turning the numbers. _Click_.

"I remember that." The voice laughed. "Of all the things to remember. That lock in particular. Couldn't tell you anything about the rest of them. But that one, I've got in here." There was a pause, and Selina felt more than saw a shimmer of movement out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to look down the hall, there was no one there. (There was never anyone there.) "Come to think of it, I'm not even sure I've got a brain in here anymore. But I've got those numbers. I think opening that lock might have been one of the last things I did. Before…"

Selina clicked the lock shut again. "You're not real," she said conversationally.

"No," the voice said agreeably. "I don't think I am. You are, though."

"I'm real," Selina agreed. "The walls are real. He's real." 

( _He_ was a different _he_ than he had been, before everything.)

She turned the numbers on the lock again. Three, eight, six, five. _Click._

"I don't think that's helping."

"It's helping me think," she told the empty hall. (If a lie was told to no one, was it really a lie?)

"What are you thinking about?"

"The machine." (She was always thinking about the machine.)

"Keep it on." The words sounded wistful.

"Keep it on," she repeated. She clicked the lock shut one last time and set it on the hall table. "I don't think I need to anymore. At least, not for the same reasons. But if I keep it on, if I study everything there is to know about it, then maybe…"

"You did win, then." The voice sounded proud. "I knew you would."

"Win." Her voice broke on the word. "There is no winning."

"What about your _maybe_?" it asked. "If you keep the machine on, and study it, _maybe_ what? Could you win then?"

"No," she said flatly. She turned away. "It's not a game. There is no win condition. Even if it worked, even if I got them all back, you'd still be gone."

"I'm right here." There was another shimmer at the edge of her vision. She didn't turn to look at it. There wouldn't be anyone there. (There was never anyone there.) "At least, I think I'm here."

"You're not," she told it flatly. "You're not here, and you're not Fenly."

"I was," the voice said. "I used to be. I don't know what I am now. Maybe an echo?"

"What, like a ghost?" She choked out a laugh. "Great, just what I need. To be haunted on top of being crazy."

(He was just a voice. Just another voice in the tumult of all the other voices in her head. Except…)

"Does being haunted run in your family?" he asked, and there was a teasing fondness to the words, a tone she hadn't heard in so long. She felt unexpected tears prickle her eyes.

(The voices didn't tease. They weren't fond. They demanded, they berated. They were all she had left.)

She swiped roughly at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I can't do this," she said, her voice choked. "You're not real." She shook her head to clear it, marching steadily to the end of the hall, away from the black door. "I'm real. He's real. The walls are real. You are not real."

"Okay," Fenly's voice said mildly, and the hallway shimmered a final time as she walked away.  
______________

The second time, she was in the secret study.

Time meant nothing to her. She slept. She woke, and studied the machine. Sometimes she'd remember to eat. Days were useless, weeks worthless, months meaningless. Maybe it had been a year. She didn't know.

She worked. First, she had inspected everything in the study, tearing the room to pieces, piling everything into categories, reaching into the dark recesses of the desk and the equipment to locate secret compartments, find anything that may have been hidden away. 

(She had packed up the bones and moved them to the sub-basement, out of sight but not out of reach. Just in case.)

Her notes filled books, then stacks of books, then stacks of boxes of books. The piles kept shifting, the connections between items nebulous and contradictory. She worked endlessly, both because there was no end to the work, and because there was nowhere else for her to be. (No one needed her. She was alone. All she had was the work.)

"This doesn't belong here."

The voice spoke behind her, and she didn't turn, didn't even lift her head from the notes she was taking. "You don't belong here," she said flatly.

There was a surprised laugh. "Probably true," the voice agreed easily. "But no, you've got that whole pile of parts over on the table, and I was taking a look at it, and I think you've got something filed wrong."

She sighed, setting down her pen. "A lot of things are still filed wrong," she pointed out. "I'm not done." (She'd never be done.)

"This one here. It's not a part. I think it's a sculpture, like those ones over there. I think it's art."

Selina sighed, rubbing a hand over her eyes. "Does it matter?"

"I don't know. Maybe. How do we know what matters yet?"

"There's no 'we.'" (There was only her.)

"I miss art," it said wistfully. "So I was looking at the sculptures. And most of them are stone, or clay, but there are couple with metal details, and I think this spiral belongs with them. I think…I don't know. Some of them feel…familiar."

"Familiar," she echoed, and pushed herself up from the desk, stretching until her neck cracked. She crossed the room to look at the scattered pile of metal objects. "This one?" She picked up a swirl, dull and weathered.

"That one!" The voice was eager. "The same motif is repeated on a couple of the others, just smaller and less detailed."

She tossed the hunk of metal in the direction of the uncategorized art. "There," she said. "Happy now? Will you let me get back to work?"

There was silence for long enough that she started to think he had left. (He was never there in the first place.) She turned back to the desk.

"I'm not here to make things harder for you, Selina."

"You're not here at all."

"I think…I think I might be able to help."

"You can't," she said flatly. "No one can." (There was no one left. Only her.)

"Unfinished business."

She paused, looking toward the corner of the room that might have just been shimmering. "What?"

"Ghosts," the voice clarified. "You know, that's how a lot of ghost stories go. That there's some spirit sticking around because it has something it has to get done. What if…what if my unfinished business is helping you?"

"There's no such thing as ghosts, Fenly."

"Okay," he said easily. "But there _is_ an awful lot of energy flowing through this building. Weird energy. You're okay with portals to other worlds and creepy all-seeing entities, but not with ghosts?"

"I'm not okay with any of it!" she snapped. She reached the desk, sagging down into the chair and pillowing her head into her arms. "But it's real," she said, her voice muffled. "This is real. The walls are real. I'm real. The machine is real."

"And you can't let yourself believe that I'm real too?" 

"No," she replied. ( _Not yet_ , hovered in a corner of her mind, but she was choked by the enormity of it.)

"Okay," he replied. "You don't need to. I'll be here anyway." His voice faded as he spoke, as if he were moving away from her. It sounded very far away as he said the next words, maybe all the way back out into the bathroom, but she could hear in them that he was smiling.

"You called me Fenly."  
_____________

"Anything good?"

She wasn't startled by his voice this time, looking up from the pile of papers on her bed to catch an indistinct blur of movement out of the corner of her eye. "What, these?" she asked, lifting a page.

"Yeah," he said. "Guess you raided everyone's rooms, huh?"

"I didn't _raid_ them," she said. "I was just curious."

"I thought you already knew everything about everyone." His voice was teasing. 

"You know I didn't." 

"Yeah," he said. "I know." He sounded close, close enough that she could almost picture him settling onto the end of her bed, maybe tucking his knees up to his chest, leaning over to peer at the script spread out in front of her. "So, are they any good?"

"They're…" she sighed, letting her fingers brush over the printed words. "They sound like him. They're sad, but not _just_ sad. There's a lot of dry humor. And…" She lifted a shoulder. "I don't know. Hope, maybe."

(Something she couldn't relate to. Something she'd never had, and never would.)

"You miss him." He sounded wistful.

"Yeah." Her voice choked on the word. "Of course I do. I – " She swallowed what she wanted to say. (No sense in admitting it. It meant nothing.) "I miss all of them," she said instead.

"How's the work going?"

"Slow." (Endless.)

"Do you think – "

"I don't know," she interrupted him. She shuffled the pages of the play back together, setting it onto her bedside table. "I don't know." She curled onto her side, facing the wall, closing her eyes. "I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Trying," he said simply.

"That's not enough." (It would never be enough. She would never be enough.)

"Then do something else," he suggested. (There was nothing else. There was only her, only the machine.) "When I would get stuck on a project, I'd start working on a new one. Even if it was bullshit. Just something to give me a break. A new perspective."

"This isn't an art project, Fenly," she said. 

"We could make it one."

She laughed, the sound catching in her throat. "That's not really my thing."

"No, but it's mine."

 _You're not real_ , she wanted to remind him. (He wasn't. Maybe he had never been real.) Instead, she kept her eyes closed, staring into the darkness behind her eyelids and imagining that for the first time in a very long time, she wasn't falling asleep alone.  
______________

"I think…" she said aloud to the room, and slotted the last tube into place. "That maybe, if these pieces are in the right place, I might be able to – " She pulled the lever toward her. 

(It wouldn't work. It was never going to work.)

A burst of energy flared out, knocking her across the room. She slammed back into a bookshelf, spilling some of its contents onto her as she crumbled to the ground.

"Holy shit! Selina!" she heard Fenly yelling, but she ignored him, shoving the books and parts off of her. At the far end of the room, near the lever, the energy was still crackling, sending sparks shooting outward, but at the center of it…

She could feel tears start to stream down her face, from the pain and the shock and the sheer impossibility of what she had done. "It's…Fenly, are you…?"

"It's a portal." His voice was awed. "I'm seeing it, yeah, it's…you did it. Selina, you…" She pushed herself upwards, completely disregarding the screaming pain in her muscles. She launched herself to her feet. "Wait!" he cried.

She barely heard him. There was wind blowing from the center of the storm of energy, wind and sand and the familiar scent of ozone, and when she reached the edge of it, there was nothing beyond. An endless wasteland. A purple sky.

"Emmett!" she cried, leaning from side to side, trying to see as much of the land as she could. "Abigail! Jude!" 

She heard nothing but the howling of the wind. She launched herself toward the portal, but felt _something_ brush past her, saw an exaggerated shimmer in the edge of her vision. 

"Selina, _no_!" Fenly was yelling. "You don't know where you're going! You'll be lost too!"

"So what?" she asked, rounding on the space where he wasn't. "Who _cares_ , Fenly?"

His voice was mournful as he said, "I do."

"You're not real," she snapped.

"You might never find them."

"But I _might_. I have a better chance in there than out here!"

"And what if something happens to the portal? What if it closes, and you're all stuck in there forever? They sent you back for a _reason_ , Selina. They trusted you to be the one to save them. You're so close! We're so close. But if you go in there…" he trailed off, and his voice was a little harder as he said, "you'll never earn it."

The words knocked the wind out of her. "I…I have to earn it," she said in a tiny voice. "I have to be worth it."

"You will." His voice was close to her, like he may have been hugging her if he could. "But not like this."

She looked through the portal, at the stormclouds streaking across the unfamiliar sky. She knelt and reached out a hand through it, because there was nothing he could do to stop her. The sand was soft and warm against her skin, and the energy sparked around her arm, standing her hair on end.

The sand was still clutched in her fingers when she finally pulled her hand back, and she let it trickle out between them into an empty jar on the table beside her. She looked into the jar, expecting the sand to dissolve, to crumble into nothingness, but it stayed there, solid and inert.

"It's real," she said.

"It's real," Fenly confirmed. "And all you have to do to get there again is pull the lever. But maybe…maybe there's something we've been missing. Maybe there's a way to find them. We can work at it. We can try. And if someday, eventually, you feel like we've done all we can… _then_ you can go through. For now…" She heard his voice light up with a spark of inspiration. "You could leave them something!"

"Like a note?" she asked. 

"Like supplies."

She felt a hysterical laugh rise up out of her. "A care package?" She let the laugh crumble out of her, weak and disbelieving. "Sure, yeah, I've got…what, a whole building full of blankets. Some extra flashlights. Some food, maybe?" She shoved herself up off the ground, and felt a genuine smile spread across her lips. "Jude still had a ton of cigarettes in his room." She reconsidered. "Although I guess he's probably had to quit."

Fenly was laughing as the sound of his voice followed her out of the study, through Emmett's bathroom, through his room and into the rest of the building. 

It was absurd. Ridiculous. (Useless. Pointless. There would never be anything but this. Her, alone in this building.) 

But somehow running around packing up supplies was the most alive she had felt in months. Years.

Maybe her entire life.  
______________

"I remembered."

Fenly's voice over her shoulder was close and startling. The ancient notebook she was struggling to translate tumbled out of her hands.

"Don't _do_ that," she told him.

"Sorry," he said, sounding completely unrepentant. "It's just…the sculptures. The ones in the corner that you didn't know what to do with. I know we figured out a while ago that some of them match the symbols on that dial by the lever, but there was something else about them…I'd seen some of them before."

"Where?" she was already crossing the room, kneeling by the pile, reaching out to sift through the mess with her fingers.

"That one!" Fenly's voice interrupted her as her hand closed around one shaped like…some kind of animal. The edges were worn and she couldn't identify it, but she held it up.

"This?"

"I saw it _there_ ," he said.

She looked down at it. "In the wastes?"

"It was more worn down there," he said. "But there was a huge broken statue of it on our way to the castle, when we were first there. And the spiral, there was a formation shaped like that near the tower. And that one, the kind of triangular one? I saw that somewhere too. What if…"

"…they're locations," she finished.

"And the dial's a combination lock," he said, letting out a little giggle. "Three, eight, six, five. Animal, triangle, spiral."

"Coordinates," she said breathlessly. "If we put them in, and the portal triangulates to the position between them…"

"We can start making a map," he finished. He let out a frustrated noise. "I can't _draw_."

"I'll be your hands," she said absently, already hauling herself up from the floor. "We'll have to do this systematically," she said, already starting to plan. Her eyes fell on the jar of sand sitting at the edge of her desk, as if it would tell her what she needed to do. "We'll need to make a list of the symbols, and open the portals in a particular order, note what we can see from what angles, and start trying to find any common landmarks…" her words trailed off as she bustled around the office, gathering what they needed, but as she reached at the desk, she paused, looking back into the space where Fenly might have been. "You're real," she said abruptly.

There was a pause, then a tiny laugh. "I am, yeah."

"I…I wouldn't have come up with that. I never paid any attention to those statues."

"I told you I could help." He sounded inordinately pleased with himself, and she longed for him to be here in person so she could punch him in the arm for his smugness.

"You did," she agreed. "You were right. I'd say don't let your head get too big about it, but, well. I'm not really sure you have a head."

He giggled. "I mean…" he said suggestively, and she felt a genuine burst of laughter welling up in her.

"Oh my _god_ , Fenly," she said, letting the laughter bubble over.

He laughed. "Sorry, sorry, couldn't help it." He cleared his throat, trying to sober himself. "Okay. Map time."

"Map time," she agreed, and when her fingers picked up a pen to start writing down the symbols as he called them out to her, she realized they were trembling.

She made a list of options, and they started, opening one portal after another. Each time, her heart leapt into her throat, expecting to see three familiar figures in the distance. Portal after portal opened and closed, and with each one, she felt a bit of her resolve crumble.

(They weren't out there. They were gone. She would never find them. She was alone.)

They worked long into what was probably the night, until her hands were shaking with exhaustion, her eyes too tired to focus on landmarks, and she knew that she couldn't really feel Fenly, but there was a shimmer of reality around her hands as his voice said quietly, tenderly, "You need to go to bed."

"One more," she begged him. "Let's just do one more."

The portal opened on a vast nothingness beyond, and she felt her knees give out, her whole body curling in on itself.

"They're not out there."

"They are," he told her. "They're out there, and you're going to find them. But not tonight."

(They were gone. They would never be found.)

"Not tonight," she agreed distantly, and she shut the portal without marking down any notes.  
______________

They opened the hundred seventy-eighth portal, and there was something in the distance.

"I don't think I've seen this landmark before," Selina said, leaning in to make it out better. "It looks like there's a few pillars, in a row, not near the horizon, but a little closer, at about two o'clock. No…" she squinted harder. "More like one o'clock. Wait. I think they're. Holy shit." She sprang to her feet, spilling the notebook and the map onto the floor. "They're moving. There's something moving out there. Fenly…"

"I see them. There's…" he sounded breathless. "There's three of them."

She looked toward the sound of his voice wildly. "I’m going in."

She expected an objection, but instead she felt a shimmer of _possibility_ around her, almost like a nudge in the direction of the portal. "Be careful," was all he said.

The energy sparked across her body as she launched herself through the gateway, her feet smacking dully into the sand where she landed. The figures were definitely alive, definitely moving toward her, and as she started to run in their direction, she could see them take form.

"Emmett!" She felt the words tearing from her throat. "Emmett! Abigail! Jude!" Tears were streaming down her face, whipping away in the wind that flew past her as she ran.

She threw herself headlong into the tallest figure, catching just the slightest glimpse of his eyes over the scarf wrapped over his face as she collided with him. They were wide and disbelieving and also filled with tears. She hit his chest at speed and felt his arms wrap around her, felt his whole body fold into hers, both of them falling to the sand with the force of their impact.

She clung to him helplessly, her fingers tight in his layers of unfamiliar clothing, feeling him bury his face against her neck, gasping for breath, her name uncertain on his lips. "Selina," he breathed out, his voice trembling. "Are you…is this…?"

"I’m real," she assured him, and then felt the impact of Abigail against her back, tumbling them both back into the sand. "This is real," she told him as Jude dropped to his knees beside the tangle of them, dragging them all into his arms. "There are walls, through that portal." She couldn't point toward it, wrapped up as she was in all of them, but she looked to it, confirming it was still there. It glittered with energy under the purple sky. "And they're real." She reached up, getting a hand under the scarf wrapped around Emmett's head, sinking her fingers into his hair and holding him impossibly close. "We're real. We're going home."

"Home." The word was a sob against her skin.

They stood, somehow, retrieving their limbs from the puzzle of each other, but Selina stayed wrapped around Emmett's middle, Abigail's arm around Selina, Jude's fingers tangled into Abigail's, dragging them all forward toward the shining beacon of the portal. There was a part of her that was almost certain that the portal was going to flicker closed before they reached it, that it would blink out of existence, stranding them here for the rest of eternity, but she found a strange sort of peace with the possibility, the thought of never returning to the building, the machine, of creating for a life for themselves here, folding herself into the life that Emmett, Abigail, and Jude had built.

Instead, they tumbled into the study together, the floor thudding solidly under their feet. Emmett and Abigail sunk to the ground again, and it was Jude who crossed to the lever. It had been Jude who had pulled it the first time, and Selina saw an almost feral grin spread over his lips as he slammed the lever back, cutting them off from the wasteland. Only then did he crumble, leaning back against the wall, letting his head thunk dully against it, staring up at the ceiling blankly.

"Holy shit." Fenly's voice echoed through the room. "Holy shit, it _worked_!" 

"What the _fuck_?" Jude asked, lifting his head, and when Selina looked to Abigail and Emmett, they were also both looking around the room, eyes wide.

Selina felt weightless. "You can hear him?" she asked in a tiny voice.

Emmett reached for her hand, looking up at her from the floor. "We hear him," he assured her, grounding her with his touch and his low steady voice. His eyes flickered past her into the empty room. "Fenly?" he asked carefully.

"Yeah, I know, it's weird, I don't know," Fenly babbled. "I'm here. Kind of. Like, not _here_ , really. At least, you can't see me. But I've been here, with Selina."

Emmett's fingers tightened on hers. "Thank god," he muttered. "You weren't alone."

She waited for the rejection of the words, the reminder that she had been alone, that she would always be alone, but for the moment, with his hand wrapped around hers, and Abigail's eyes on her, and Jude crossing the room to be with them all, the voices were silent.

The voices. Were silent.

She collapsed, curling herself against Emmett's shoulder, letting the sobs that had been building for weeks, months, years, wrack her body, and he held her, Abigail wrapping around her from behind, Jude's hand stroking a soothing pattern over her back. 

"Thank you," Emmett whispered, hoarse and frantic. "Thank you. You found us. You _saved_ us. You did all _this_." She could feel his arm gesture to the room. His lips pressed dry and rough to her temple as he added in a lower whisper, just for her, "We'll earn it."

They held each other like that for a long time, and it was finally Abigail who pulled away, who sat back to lean against Jude's legs and look up at him. 

"We can shower," she said.

His entire face lit up. "Oh, holy shit."

Selina felt a giggle well up in her. "You can," she agreed. "…You should, really." She wrinkled her nose, and Abigail burst out laughing.

"Oh my god, I missed you," she said. She dragged Selina in for another hug, and to Selina's surprise, she pressed a quick kiss to the corner of her lips.

Selina's lips parted, her eyes darting past Abigail to Jude, but he was just watching them with a fond smile, so she turned to dart her own kiss against Abigail's cheek. Abigail was grinning as she reached for Jude, letting him haul her to her feet.

Selina felt a pang at letting them out of her sight, but she could hear them as they made their way down the hall to the stairs, could hear the clang of the pipes as the shower turned on, and it felt remarkably good for the building to suddenly feel lived-in again. 

"I'm gonna make myself scarce," Fenly announced. "But I'll be around."

Selina felt a stab of fear. "Are you sure?" she asked.

She could hear the smile in his voice as he responded. "I don't think you need me for this part."

She flushed. "No, I just mean…if you've…finished your business…"

He laughed. "I don’t think you're getting rid of me that easy. I think you were right, after all. There's no such thing as ghosts. I'm…something else." She felt a swell of relief. "I think you're stuck with me. Maybe I can be your next project. Nothing like losing your corporeal form to give you a million ideas for art pieces you can't execute."

"Good, I'm going to need a new project," she told him, but her mind was already starting to drift away from the conversation, tuning back in to the feeling of Emmett pressed up against her, his hands holding her close to him, his chest rising and falling in unsteady breaths.

"Sounds like a plan for later," Fenly said, "but I'll hold you to it." 

Silence fell on the room, and Selina turned back to look at Emmett, to really look into his eyes for the first time. They were piercing into her intently, like they hadn't left her from the moment they'd found each other, and maybe they hadn't. She'd been so focused on getting them _here_ that she really hadn't taken the time to soak in the sight of him. His scarf had dropped down around his neck, baring his shaggy hair, the beard curling at his jaw, his troubled expression.

"Hey." She reached to touch his face, the beard rough under her fingers. "You're okay. You're here." She swallowed. "You're real."

His expression cleared a little. "Real," he repeated, his voice rough. "I keep feeling like I'm going to wake up."

"You have to go to sleep first," she told him practically. 

He breathed out a laugh. "You're incredible, you know that?" He tilted his face into her touch and closed his eyes. "I didn't have time," he said, "before the rift closed. I was going to…" he laughed again, low and bitter. "I was going to do so many things. But I would have told you…" his words choked off, and his fingers went tight against her skin. "I would have told you to move on with your life. To go be happy. To start over. You didn't. You stayed here, and you did _this_ , and…I can't say I'm not glad you did, because I'm _here_ , but…I'm sorry." He let out a shuddering breath. "I'm sorry that this has been your life. You should have had so much."

"I do," she said. He opened his eyes to look at her. "I have so much," she said. "I have you back. I have Abigail, and Jude, and Fenly. That's…" She swallowed. "That's more than I've ever had. Whatever else you had in mind…" She shrugged. "It can come later." Everything in her was desperate to use the hold she had on his face to drag him in, to kiss him until neither of them could breathe, but instead she let her hand slide back, her fingers curling up into his hair.

He gave her a wry smile. "Not a lot of haircuts to be found out there," he said. "We had some knives. Did the best we could." 

"You look good," she told him. "Rugged."

He laughed. "Yeah, that's a word for it. I could go for that shower." A haunted expression flickered across his face. "Could I use your bathroom, though?"

Her eyes darted toward the shattered wall. "Yeah. Of course."

He gathered some clothes from his room, running his hands across the fabric as if he was relearning what it was to feel something not made of sand and grit. The walk to her room felt endless, his hand warm and steady in hers, and as she closed the door behind them, she felt his grip on her suddenly, hands pushing her up against the door.

She looked up into his face, close and intense, and barely had a moment to draw in a breath before his lips were on hers, hot and claiming. She kissed him back desperately, hands coming up to cling to his back, but his stayed steady and almost gentle against her sides, holding her still but not demanding more.

They kissed for a long while, his beard rough against her skin, hands firm and broad and warm, and when he finally pulled back, gasping for breath, she felt dazed.

"I wanted to." His voice was rough. His head dropped to her shoulder, breath panting out of him. "Before you went back through the portal. I wanted that, wanted to kiss you forever. But I was…" He shuddered. "I was afraid."

"Of me?" she asked, laughing a little.

" _For_ you," he said. "I thought…I was afraid you wouldn't leave. You needed to leave. You needed to _live_."

"I did," she told him. She pulled him closer, kissing the side of his head. "I lived. Because of you. All of you."

"And we lived because of you."

She grinned. "Can't write this shit." She threw his words back at him, not sure he'd even remember them, but the low rumble of laugh he let out against her shoulder made her think that he did. He held her close for another very long moment before letting her go, stepping back out of her space.

"I really do need a shower," he said ruefully. He leaned down to pick up the clothes that he'd discarded on the floor.

"Need a hand?" she offered, trying for sexy and landing somewhere in the vicinity of awkward, but the grin he gave her was genuine.

"Trust me," he said, "you _really_ don't want…" he waved a hand at himself, "whatever's going on here. Let me clean up. Then I'm all yours."

He left the bathroom door open, like he knew she didn't want to be far from him, and she curled up in her bed and listened to the sound of the water splashing around as he showered, his tuneless humming, like he'd forgotten anyone was listening. She closed her eyes and drifted, and only opened them when she felt him settling against the edge of the bed.

He looked exhausted. His hair and beard were trimmed – not a full cut or shave, but neater than they'd been – and he was wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, his chest and arms bare, displaying sun-browned skin marked with scars, some fresher than others. His eyelids were drooping, and when she reached to tug him into the bed, she found his skin still warmed from the heat of the shower.

"I wanted…" he said sleepily as she gathered him into her arms, and he pressed a messy kiss to the side of her neck.

"Later," she promised. 

He shook his head, pulling away from her. "I don't want to go to sleep," he insisted. He pushed himself up against the headboard, looking around the room. His eyes fell to the stack of plays on her bedside table. "Oh." He looked at her. "Oh no." A flush crept up his neck. "You didn't."

She grinned up at him. "I did."

He lifted a hand to his head, rubbing at his forehead, looking pained. "Some of them aren't finished," he said. "They're not…"

"They were you," she said a little sharply. "They were all I had of you." 

He looked from her to the stack of papers, then very deliberately, like a cat, reached over to knock them off the bedstand. "Not anymore," he said.

She giggled. "No," she agreed. "This is better." She tugged him back down until he relented and slid under the covers again, letting her wrap around him. 

"I don't want to go to sleep," he repeated.

"Why?"

"Because if I wake up…" he said, and didn't finish.

"I'll still be here," she promised him. " _You'll_ still be here. The walls are real. You're real. I'm real."

"Real." He repeated the word like it meant nothing, but he gathered her closer and closed his eyes.

It was long enough before he spoke again that she thought he might have fallen asleep, and his voice was so faint when he did that she had to strain to hear it. "I'm not going to finish those, you know."

"Hm?" She'd been drifting on her own thoughts, the feeling of him pressed against her.

"The plays," he clarified. "I'm not going to finish any of them."

"'t's'okay," she told him. "You'll write something else."

He laughed, his breath ruffling her hair. "I don't know that I even remember how."

"You will," she said confidently. 

"What makes you think that?" he asked.

She curled against him, breathing in the clean scent of him, feeling his body stretched out warm and solid and _real_ against her. "Because," she said, the answer simple and clear in her mind. "You have so many more stories to tell now."

She closed her eyes, but she stayed awake until she felt him drift off to sleep against her, his breath going low and even, his fingers going slack against her skin. Only then did she let her mind drift, her consciousness fade, and for the first time that she could remember, she heard no voices as she fell asleep, no contradictions to the peace of the moment.

(She slept. She was not alone.)


End file.
